Mexico drug use soars as U.S. meth labs shift south
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Crouched down a few yards south of a border fence dividing Mexico and the United States, vagrant drug addict Marco Aurelio takes a battered syringe and searches among the running sores on his skin for a vein to inject.
Pushing the charger in to the hilt, he slips into a $5 burst of euphoria that the Mexican says “neutralizes” life on the streets of Tijuana, one of the roughest cities along the border.
Cheaper than cocaine or heroin and with a longer-lasting high, methamphetamine has been widely snorted, smoked and injected by blue-collar drug users in towns and cities over the border in California for decades.
Red Cross launches $653 mln 5-yr tsunami aid plan
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The global Red Cross and Red Crescent body on Monday launched a $653 million five-year plan to help 10 Asian and African nations around the Indian Ocean to rebuild after last December’s devastating tsunami.
The wide-ranging project, covering 2005-2010, is the biggest and longest ever mounted by the Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), which links organisations in more than 181 countries.
The cost will be covered by funds already raised by its member bodies.
Iran watchdog rejects bill easing abortion ban
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Iran’s legislative watchdog rejected a bill that would have permitted the abortion of a handicapped foetus as un-Islamic on Monday, parliament’s Web site reported.
Lawmakers had last month approved a bill to allow abortions when a mother’s life was in danger or the baby would be handicapped.
Some lawmakers who backed the bill had said a handicapped child could be a financial burden on a family.
Gene mutation linked to lumbar disc disease
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A mutation in a cartilage-related gene called CILP leads to disease of the vertebral discs in the lower spine, according to a report in the research journal Nature Genetics.
A predisposition to lumbar disc disease runs in families, suggesting that genetic factors are an important underlying cause, Dr. Shiro Ikegawa of the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, Tokyo and associates point out.
Hair X-ray test might spot early breast cancer
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Results of an animal study suggest that measuring the way X-Rays are diffracted when they pass through a hair could be used to diagnose breast cancer at an early stage, and monitor treatment results.
This bolsters findings from an earlier study and ongoing work by the same group of researchers.
In their initial study reported in 1999, Dr. Veronica James of the Australian National University, Canberra, and colleagues first suggested the possibility of diagnosing breast cancer by hair diffraction.
Celebrity backing of cancer screening questioned
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Celebrities can indeed persuade people to undergo cancer screening, but researchers are not sure it’s necessarily a good thing.
Many men and women say they are more likely to undergo screening for various cancers having seen the endorsements of Rudolph Giuliani, Katie Couric and other celebrities, new study findings show.
Yet, the researchers say, persuasion may not be appropriate given the complexities involved in cancer screening - the fact that there are risks involved, such as false positive test results that can lead to unnecessary further testing and treatment.
Drinking in middle school tied to risky sex
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Kids who begin drinking in the 7th grade are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior in mid-adolescence - but parents can make a difference in their kids’ drinking habits, researchers have shown.
In a new study, U.S. investigators found that students who said they started drinking by the 7th grade were more likely to say they had unprotected sex, multiple partners, sex while drunk or high, or been pregnant.
In another related study, a group of researchers showed that middle-schoolers who binge drink—downing at least 5 drinks on one occasion—are more likely to binge drink in high school.
Indonesia steps up polio vaccinations
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Indonesia stepped up polio vaccinations around several villages in West Java province on Friday as international concern grew over an outbreak of the virus that has crippled six infants.
Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari told El Shinta radio station that the number of positive cases had risen to six, from five on Thursday. All were near the city of Sukabumi, about 100 km (62 miles) south of Jakarta.
Health officials are studying up to 10 other possible cases.
Women hold “nurse-in” for U.S. breast-feeding bill
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Dozens of mothers and babies held a pre-Mother’s Day “nurse-in” near the U.S. Capitol on Thursday to support legislation to make it easier for working women to breast-feed or pump milk for their babies on the job.
“Breast-feeding is natural and it has a health benefit to mothers and children,” said the legislation’s chief sponsor, New York Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, trying to be heard above the din of young children.
Her bill would expand the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act so a woman could not be fired or discriminated against in the workplace for pumping or nursing on breaks.
Get ears pierced early to avoid keloids: study
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Delaying ear piercing until the pre-teen years or later may increase a person’s chances of developing keloids—raised, fibrous scar tissue—new study findings suggest.
Among a small group of patients with keloids that developed after ear piercing, the majority had their ears pierced at age 11 or older.
Keloids are a “common complaint” among patients who visit the dermatologist, study author Dr. Loretta S. Davis told Reuters Health. “You can get a keloid at any age,” she said, “however, it seems to be much less common (among those who get their ears pierced) in early childhood compared to after age 11.”
Mercury dental fillings seem safe for moms-to-be
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Pregnant women who are given dental fillings—even those that contain mercury—do not increase their chances of giving birth to very small babies, according to new study findings.
These results contradict long-held concerns that it’s unsafe for women to get mercury-amalgam dental fillings during pregnancy, due to the potential harm mercury may pose to an unborn child.
“We did not see any evidence that (silver) fillings had an impact on birth weight,” told study author Dr. Philippe Hujoel of the University of Washington in Seattle.
US salmonella cases linked to rats, hamsters - CDC
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U.S. health officials warned the public on Thursday to be careful when handling mice, rats and hamsters after an investigation into the first documented human cases of salmonella linked to pet rodents.
Although salmonella poisoning typically occurs as a result of eating contaminated food, such as eggs or meat, a number of cases were reported in people infected through contact with animals, usually snakes or turtles.
Pet chicks, ducklings, kittens and hedgehogs also have been linked to human outbreaks.
Wyeth drug cuts atrial fibrillation relapse
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Wyeth’s drug Cordarone does a better job at preventing the return of an irregular heart rhythm than Betapace, a Schering drug designed to do the same thing, researchers said on Wednesday.
But the benefit does not occur in patients where the flow of blood to the heart muscle has been restricted by Heart disease.
The head-to-head study, published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, involved patients with Atrial Fibrillation, a condition where the rhythm in the upper part of the heart becomes rapid and chaotic.
Nigeria records 54 new polio cases since Feb-WHO
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Fifty-four new polio cases were recorded in Nigeria between February and April, a drop of nearly a half from last year, according to the World Health Organisation.
The infection rate is down from the 91 cases recorded between Feb. 27 and April 29, 2004, WHO said in its weekly report obtained on Thursday.
The report said nine new cases were confirmed in Yobe state and Nigeria’s biggest city, Lagos - the first in the southern region where WHO said there had been no fresh infections since September.
Drug-eluting stents not as good in real world
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The new generation of stents—tiny mesh tubes used to prop open clogged coronary arteries—may not perform quite as well as studies suggest in preventing re-blockage.
The stents release drugs that are intended to prevent over-growth of the artery walls that can cause the artery to close up again. According to a report in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association, however, rates of blood-clot formation reported with drug-eluting stents are higher in real-world settings than those achieved in clinical trials.
In clinical trials, the rate of blood-clots occurrences in stents after 9 to 12 months has ranged from 0.4 percent to 0.6 percent, depending on the type of drug-eluting stent.
